Cd Rom and Hard drive on same cable?

[Edave]

Hello All,
Im in the middle of slapping the kids puter together,and just realized that I do not have an extra flat ide cable handy.Im using an old cd rom so I forgot to order an extra cable.
My question is will it hurt performance of the system if I run the hard drive and cd rom from the same cable?Or should I wait until monday and get one for the cd drive?
Kids want this thing done Now:)
Thanks for any input.
Dave

[mattg2k4]

It depends. Hard drives typically will be forced to run at the cd roms ata 33 speed. If the hard drive is ata 33, then it will not be slowing down, obviously. If it is an ata 100 or ata 133 drive then it will slow down. I have also heard (don't remember where or why), that the hard drive doesn't necesarily slow down.

I'd put the 'puter together now so the kids can have their fun, then put the drives on seperate cables once you get the new cable.

[AlwaysUp]

My textbook for the A+ exam states decisively that any two devices sharing one IDE controller bus and one ribbon cable, reguardless of the IDE controller being ATA/66/100/133 capable will be limited to the data transfer rate of the "slowest" device connected to said controller. In other words a CD-Rom has a maximum burst transfer rate of 33mbps and even though your IDE interface supports higher transfer rates and your hdd supports higher transfer rates the IDE controller is limited to the slowest device speed. I agree get another 80 conductor cable and put them on separate IDE controllers.

[Edave]

Thanks guys,
I'll just go ahead and wait and get a new cable.
I bought a new 7200 rpm WD hard drive for it,so I want to get the max performance from it.
They will just have to stick with X-Box for a few more days:)

Thanks again for your info,its very much appreciated.
Dave

[AlwaysUp]

Does that WD have the 8mb buffer they offer now? I have read good reviews about performance of these drives over the standard 2mb buffer on AnandTech.com .

[Edave]

No,
this one is just the 20 gig with the 2mb buffer.
If i ever get the one with the 8mb buffer,its going in Dads computer:D

[ILLPHIL]

does this mean that if i have a hard drive and zip drive on the same ribbon cable my hard drive won't perform at top speed?? im planning on getting an ata/100 hard drive

[Alienware_Dude]

Yes.

[ILLPHIL]

thanks